VA - Art of the Muses

Verdict: 4/5

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'Art of the Muses' is an album compiled by C-drík Fermont, label head of Syrphe, revealing 10 overlooked female artists from Far East Asia. The purpose behind it is to make a statement in the experimental electronic music scene which, in the West, is seeing a considerable reaction from feminist enthusiasts through their efforts of developing new networks, events, workshops and festivals dedicated to the art of women in a male dominated field. Although these activities do bring a lot of focus on female composers, it's the Western ones that are presented, while artists from Asia, Africa and Latin America are still being excluded from the public view.

The compilation starts off with a beautiful piece from Taiwanese singer Alice Hui-Sheng Chang entitled 'The world's top destinations for diving and skydiving'. It blends use of the voice as an instrument with silence in an intimate manner of making the listener feel physically close to the composer, just like her second track on the album, 'The sun descends the room darkens'.

Aki Ito's collaboration with Julien Chatellier'Slowness' is a pulsating, ambient track that brings together electronic sounds with wind instruments. 'Harmonicswave 02' is Aki Ito's second contribution to the album, a low fi string recording. South Korean Itta's 'Dabo' is a perfect example of her unique experimental pop-noise music for voice, toy instruments and electronics. Water, porcelain bowls, hydrophones, condenser microphones, metal wire and wood spoons were used for 'Mylapore', a track that seems to be depicting a beautiful garden where nature is the only aesthetic, composed by Paris based electro-acoustic Japanese musician Tomoko Sauvage in 2009.

'Snake-rope sublation' is the work of Singaporean sound artist Kismett whom we're hoping to hear more from as this is the only track that can be found from her so far. VAVABOND comes from Mainland China where she occupies a place of her own in the free improvisation music scene. Her identity is built on daring pure experimentation of sound and glitches that realize her conception to the world - to divide an integral entirety into infinite parts to get infinite entireties. 'Shadow of Iron' is one such track of her's.

Taiwanese sound and video designer and composer Pei has previously released two soundscape and field recording albums as well as a noise/ abstract one. 'Om of the tree' is a beautiful atmospheric track from her on 'Art of the Muses'. Verita Shalavita Koapaha's 'Kemrungsung' shines through a soft sense of surprising calmness.

''Somnambulism'' by Lương Huệ Trinh has a certain kind of elegantly expressed pain in it and is my personal favorite from this V/A release as I like having my patience taken good advantage of. The 13th and final track is Lau Mun Leng's, literally, ''The Rustle of Paper''.

'Somnambulism' by Lương Huệ Trinh has a certain kind of elegantly expressed pain in it and is my personal favorite from this V/A release as I like having my patience taken good advantage of. The 13th and final track is Lau Mun Leng's, literally, 'The Rustle of Paper'.

'Art of the Muses' is a great curatorial effort that introduces the listener to a distant, avant-garde sound collected from these 10 representative female artists from the remote Far East Asia (Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia).